----- Original Message -----From: "Taoss" <taoss@worldnet.att.net>Sent:
Friday, September 14, 2001 11:40 PMSubject: Quotes I am way behind
in my emails and just opened this one. I thought you might find these
quotes interesting, especially in view of Tuesday's tragedy. As a
species, I think we owe it to ourselves to take responsibility in all that
has happened as a result of what we, as a society, have [purposely or unwittingly]
sewn. War begets war; terrorism begets terrorism. Those are
not my rules. They are the rules of this Universe. It's just
the way things happen to work in this Universe. You reap what you
sew. Goes around, comes around ~~ always ~~ without fail. It's
something to think about...

" The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what
Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda
accomplishments of the dominant political mythology. "
Michael Parenti, political scientist and author

"Bringing democratic control to the conduct of foreign policy requires
a struggle merely to force the issue onto the public agenda."
Eric Alterman, author

"As long as people are marginalized and distracted [they] have no way
to organize or articulate their sentiments, or even know that others have
these sentiments. People assume that they are the only people with a crazy
idea in their heads. They never hear it from anywhere else. Nobody's supposed
to think that. ... Since there's no way to get together with other people
who share or reinforce that view and help you articulate it, you feel like
an oddity, an oddball. So you just stay on the side and you don't pay any
attention to what's going on. You look at something else, like the Superbowl."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign policy critic

" The people can have anything they want. The trouble is, they do not
want anything. At least they vote that way on election day."
Eugene Debs, American socialist leader, 1855-1926

" Given the [weapons] industry's command of the Congress and the Pentagon,
the defense firms create the demand for weaponry, prescribe the technological
development for our defense system, and supply the needed funds - the defense
budget. There is no novelty here. This is the military-industrial complex
... "
John Kenneth Galbraith, economist and author

" It should never be forgotten that the people must have priority."
Ho Chi Minh, Vietnamese nationalist leader, president of North
Vietnam-1954-1969

"The crimes of the U.S. throughout the world have been systematic, constant,
clinical, remorseless, and fully documented but nobody talks about them."
Harold Pinter, English dramatist

" Many Americans want to nurture an image of innocence and decency and
yet most Americans want most of all to stay on top and continue to applaud
clear victories in the Third World however achieved. "
Richard Falk, professor

"When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask
why the poor have no food, they call you a communist."
Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologist

"Humans are complex creatures. We have a demonstrated capacity for hatred,
violence, competition, and greed. We have as well a demonstrated capacity
for love, tenderness, cooperation, and compassion. Healthy societies nurture
the latter and in so doing create an abundance of those things that are
most important to the quality of our living. Dysfunctional societies nurture
the former and in so doing create scarcity and deprivation. A healthy society
makes it easy to live in balance with the environment, whereas a dysfunctional
society makes it nearly impossible. Whether we organize our societies for
social and environmental health or for dysfunction is a choice that is
ours to make."
David Korten, economist and internationalist

"Nothing appears more surprising to those who consider human affairs
with a philosophical eye than the easiness with which the many are governed
by the few, and the implicit submission with which men resign their own
sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we inquire by what
means this wonder is effected, we shall find that, as force is always on
the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but
opinion. It is, therefore, on opinion only that government is founded,
and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments
as well as to the most free and most popular."
David Hume, Scottish philosopher and historian, "Of the First Principles
of Government" 1758

" The only way to abolish war is to make peace heroic."
John Dewey, American philosopher and educator, 1859-1952

" [The Third World War] is a war that has been fought by the United
States against the Third World. It might also be called the Forty-Year
War, like the Thirty-Year and Hundred-Year Wars in Europe, for this one
began when the CIA was founded in 1947 and continues today. As wars go,
it has been the second or third most destructive of human life in all of
history, after World War I and World War II. "
John Stockwell, former CIA official and author

"We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of
altruism and world-benefaction.... We should cease to talk about vague
and unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards,
and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to
deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic
slogans, the better."
George Kennan head of U.S. State Department Policy Planning Staff,
1948

" The most effective way to restrict democracy is to transfer decision-making
from the public arena to unaccountable institutions: kings and princes,
priestly castes, military juntas, party dictatorships, or modern corporations."
Noam Chomsky, American linguist and US media and foreign policy critic

"A people that wants to be free must arm itself with a free press."
George Seldes, journalist

"Today the United States has, by far, the most unequal distribution
of wealth and income in the industrialized world. "
Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders

" If an American is concerned only about his nation, he will not be
concerned about the peoples of Asia, Africa, or South America. Is this
not why nations engage in the madness of war without the slightest sense
of penitence? Is this not why the murder of a citizen of your own nation
is a crime, but the murder of citizens of another nation in war is an act
of heroic virtue? "
Martin Luther King, Jr.

" ... the NSS [National Security State] is an instrument of class warfare,
organized and designed to permit an elite, local and multinational, to
operate without any constraint from democratic processes. This allows the
bulk of the population to be treated as a mere cost of production."
Edward Herman, economist and media analyst

"If the nation is destroyed and families are wiped out, then where can
one flee for safety?
If you care anything about your personal security, you should first
of all pray for order and tranquility throughout the four quarters of the
land, should you not?" from the Rissho Ankoku Ron MW2-43

" The government of the United States does not, in its policies, express
the decency of its people. "
Jerry Fresia, author of Toward an American Revolution

" Where is the outrage? ... If we are moved merely by greed, and there's
no longer any respect for decent or honest government, then we will suffer
the results. "
Barbara Tuchman, historian and author

" Few of us, can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow
make sense. The thought that the State has lost its mind and is punishing
so many innocent people is intolerable. And the evidence has to be internally
denied. "
Arthur Miller, playwrite

"The U.S. talks of crimes against humanity and how it's opposed to atrocities
against any human being. What about the crimes committed against those
in prison? By prison staff who are immune to prosecution? Are those incarcerated
not human beings? Why is there outrage against crimes committed against
certain people, those who can vote but not all Americans? These questions
must be answered in order for the US of America to be what it was meant
to be."
Anonymous

"Civil disobedience is not our problem. Our problem is civil obedience.
Our problem is that numbers of people all over the world have obeyed the
dictates of the leaders of their government and have gone to war, and millions
have been killed because of this obedience. Our problem is that people
are obedient all over the world in the face of poverty and starvation and
stupidity, and war, and cruelty. Our problem is that people are obedient
while the jails are full of petty thieves, and all the while the grand
thieves are running the country. That's our problem."
Howard Zinn, "Failure to Quit", p. 45

"If every day a man takes orders in silence from an incompetent superior,
if every day he solemnly performs ritual acts which he privately finds
ridiculous, if he unhesitatingly gives answers to questionnaires which
are contrary to his real opinions and is prepared to deny his own self
in public, if he sees no difficulty in feigning sympathy or even affection
where, in fact, he feels only indifference or aversion, it still does not
mean that he has entirely lost the use of one of the basic human senses,
namely, the sense of humiliation.
--Vaclav Havel